“Well, let’s not bust her if that’s the case,” Kit said, laughing, too.
She’d no sooner signed off than Baby phoned.
“I’d been planning to call you tonight,” Baby said. “How was the meeting?”
“What? Oh, at Ithaka you mean. Thanks for asking. I’ve had bikini waxes that were more pleasant, but it’s behind me now. I’m going to banish the Florida mystery man from my brain, once and for all.”
“Good for you. By the way, I don’t know if you’ve seen it yet, but I left a message on your desk from a potential client. A doctor. He said he’d also email you, but I took down his info.”
Kit had her hands full but she never turned down business. If necessary, she could hire a freelancer to help her shop any new projects that materialized.
“That’s great. Have you got a new prospect yourself?” Kit said.
“No, I’m up to my ears at the moment. Why do you ask?”
“Oh, just me being anal. The pillows on my couch look rearranged and I thought you might have taken a meeting in the apartment.”
“Oh I did use your place,” Baby said. “But it was with Miss Fancy Pants, my Sutton Place client. I left you a note about that, too. She swung by at 3:30, desperate to see swatches. We mainly used the dining table to spread out the fabrics, though she sat on the couch once while I was getting organized. She must have scooted the pillows around.”
“Not a problem,” Kit said, feeling her body sag with relief.
“Wait, were you worried someone else had been there?”
“No, no,” Kit lied. She didn’t want Baby to see how on edge she was still feeling. “Have a great weekend.”
Before fixing dinner, she slipped into her office. She found the drawings Dara had mentioned and the messages from Baby. Checking her email, she discovered that the doctor, Keith Holt, had indeed sent her a message. He wrote that over the course of a week, he’d heard people talking about her at two different dinner parties and that he’d been impressed by her website. He asked if she could come by his place next week to discuss the possibility of working on his apartment.
Nice, she thought. She offered him a few slots on the calendar, but suggested they speak on the phone first. She’d learned over time that making a connection with a potential client by telephone in advance reduced the chance of the client cancelling the appointment and postponing it indefinitely.
There was also an email from Avery, who had written to say she was “over the moon” about the concept for the cottage that Kit had sent her earlier. Kit grinned as she read it.
But at the end of the email she discovered a hitch. Avery mentioned that her aunt with the house in Key West had a selection of antiques she wanted to pass on to her and Avery needed to know which pieces, if any, would work in the cottage. She hoped Kit could make a quick trip to Key West and tag what she thought should be shipped north. Avery would foot the bill, though Kit knew she’d expect her to travel as inexpensively as possible.
The last thing Kit wanted was to be in Florida again any time soon, but Avery’s project was a substantial piece of business and she couldn’t refuse. For a moment she considered finding someone in Key West to photograph the pieces and email them to her. But that wasn’t the best way to evaluate furniture and she didn’t want Avery to incur the cost of shipping items that in the end might not work.
She wrote Avery back, saying that she would be happy to make the trip and would head down there next week. With that out of the way, they could begin serious shopping immediately afterward, which would help guarantee that the cottage would be ready by the start of summer.
Leaning back in her desk chair, Kit realized how much the thought of returning to the Keys unsettled her. Not that she worried about running into X. Even if Miami hadn’t really been his next destination, he’d probably hightailed it out of the Keys. But deep down, her emotions about Islamorada were still in a tangle, and too many questions continued to gnaw at her. Who was X? Why had he made love to her, asked to see her again, and then hoodwinked her? And how had she been so easily deceived? Being in the hot Florida